Q: What is a question bank? How are they used? Who uses them and why?

A: A question bank is repository of canned, pre-approved, common questions that have been scrubbed for bias. They are often authored for a range of UXR studies with a “fill in the bank” approach so individuals and teams can leverage them to jump start a qualitative or quantitative research project and feel more confident in doing so.

I’ve authored three question banks with about 100 questions in each. Two for corporate clients (in different industries) and one for my students.

My client question banks are tailored towards their specific brand, business, offerings, nomenclature, key questions and target audiences. They are also organized by type of question (warm up, task-based, digging deeper, Likert scales, wrap up)

My student question bank is not industry specific but is organized in the same way.

Consider developing a question bank if you run user reseach studies frequently, and or are trying to upskill or empower others on your team to feel more confident in authoring their own studies.

You can upload the bank's questions into more advanced UX tools and platforms to save time, and ensure consistency, as well.